Opium Crop on Rise In Afghan Provinces

Published: November 29, 2006

The fight against opium production in Afghanistan has achieved only limited success and will take decades to win, a report released Tuesday by the United Nation's drug agency and the World Bank said.

Efforts to stamp out Afghanistan's opium trade have been stymied by corruption, and the drug trade is now run by a few powerful players with strong political connections, said the 210-page report, titled ''Afghanistan's Drug Industry,'' an assessment of drug production from poppy-growing farmers to international drug traffickers.

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan rose 59 percent this year to 6,100 tons -- enough to make 610 tons of heroin, nearly a third more than is consumed by the world's drug users, according to the report.

The harvest provided more than 90 percent of the world's opium supply, the report said.

Gen. Khadaidad, Afghanistan's deputy minister for counternarcotics, said next year's harvest would be as large as last year's in several key southern provinces where Taliban militants had a heavy presence.

''History teaches us that it will take a generation to render Afghanistan opium free,'' said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Successful efforts to reduce poppy growing in one province often lead to increases elsewhere, the report found.